


Only Ours

by midnightfeast



Series: Twisted [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Married Couple, OC as most modern AUs, this one hurts guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightfeast/pseuds/midnightfeast
Summary: “Could I sit down?”There is no good reason to decline…Aside from, `I don’t want to see you´ and `It still hurts to hear your voice´, but none of these are suitable to do anything but hint towards the real elephant in the room.So he evades Madara’s charcoal eyes and nods.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: Twisted [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903561
Comments: 12
Kudos: 106





	Only Ours

**Author's Note:**

> Last week has been wild...
> 
> I guess I needed a cry, so I stayed up till 2am and ignored my actual assignments for this...  
> (and my other story which I am heavily editing right now...)
> 
> Well, nobody asked for this... least of all me...
> 
> All characters are property of Masashi Kishimoto.
> 
> Edit: Grammatical errors that bothered me a lot. English is not my first language so I sometimes only notice them later.

„Hello.“ 

A deep voice filled with impatient uncertainty mutters and Tobirama nearly chokes on his unchewed piece of salad, but he glances up from his half-finished plate and makes eye contact with someone he wishes could vanish into thin air and simultaneously wants to pull in. 

But Madara stands before him, plate in hand and black leather bag over his shoulder, awkwardly shifting his weight until Tobirama acknowledges him with a hum.

“Could I…” He looks around, but it is lunch hour and the café is buzzing and full. The only reason no one else has dared to ask Tobirama to sit at his table for two is that he has crafted a careful mask of superiority for moments like these. “Could I sit down?” 

There is no good reason to decline… 

Aside from, `I don’t want to see you´ and `It still hurts to hear your voice´, but none of these are suitable to do anything but hint towards the real elephant in the room. 

So he evades Madara’s charcoal eyes and nods. 

His water is not cold enough to erase the burn in his throat form the aching familiarity as the other sits down to arrange his fork and pulls out a travelmug of coffee. Tobirama inhales and can almost smell the phantom trace of Madara’s particular brew.

It makes him sick.

“You started drinking again?” he asks and Madara nearly spits out the sip he just took.

“Pardon me?” 

Tobirama gives him an incredulous look, but a searing pull in his chest has him staring at his salmon. “I didn’t know you started drinking coffee again.”

“Oh.” Yes, oh. Tobirama hasn’t had a single taste in over six months, but Madara is quick to explain. “This is peppermint tea.” 

People around them chat and laugh, metal scraping over plates and soft music from a generic radio station sets a scene that is suddenly altogether too loud and unpleasant. 

They sit in silence. 

Tobirama cannot even talk himself into finishing something that has been his favourite meal for three weeks even though his hands are still clenched around the cutlery and he contemplates taking his bag and heading back to his office early. 

“How have you been?” 

And now Tobirama’s fist clench that the metal fork surely will leave an imprint, but he is not sure what else he would do with the searing rage crawling up his spine and as Madara twitches and sits up rigid at his perforating glare. 

“Really?” And Tobirama’s voice is so much darker than he has heard it in a long while that it creates bumps on his arms. “Take a guess.”

“I’m sorry.” 

He looks as tired as Tobirama feels, has not regained his weight too the hair that he used to wear long is short, but does little to hide the hint at greying strands at his temple. 

Even as Tobirama notices that he had still been mustering him, Madara does little but roam his eyes in hesitation and eventually clears his throat. “Look, I thought about you and I wanted to contact you, several times…” 

And Tobirama cannot refrain from disrupting. “We said we would take time apart.” 

Great, now Madara frowns in anger. “I’m not trying to say that I’m over…” He disrupts himself now, stares at his pasta that is certainly turning cold, but eventually sighs resigned. “You know better than anyone else that this will not get better, but I miss you. Terribly.” 

It still hurts.

And it only gets worse, because he knows Madara and the amount of emotional afflux it takes to get him to admit to anything as openly as this.

“Can we,” he inhales deeply, “maybe talk somewhere else?”

Madara nods and murmurs, his fingers tap on the wooden surface, but there is the slightest hint of hope in his voice. “I can call in and leave early.”

Tobirama wishes he could unlearn everything about him. How his shoulders are tense, but pulled in to protect himself. From me, a small voice whispers in the back of his head, he protects himself from me. 

And it should not calm Tobirama to know that at least he is not the only one that is still open and bleeding, all shields up, walls build and barbwire for miles, but left with one final link to assured self-destruction that conveniently sits across him in this booth. 

And still, his heart jumps at the opportunity and already starts to overwrite his conflicted mentality that has connected Madara’s face with memories he tries hard to see past.

“Okay.” He says before his mind can talk him out of it. “I’ll do the same.” 

He has his phone in hand and is typing before second guessing this decision. Rustling cloths and a scraping plate tell him that Madara is typing too.

A single look at his food and his stomach turns, but it takes effort to glance towards Madara and clear his throat. “Do you want to finish?” As the other hesitantly looks up, he adds, “Lunch,” and then Madara shakes his head. 

When he stands, he still flinches at the movement in his right knee because of an injury obtained from a car accident during their university days. And still, he takes Tobirama’s plate with an almost shy look and returns it at the bar, apparently apologises to the waiter for the waste of food and leaves an extra note in the tip glass. 

They leave for Tobirama’s apartment, the one he rented when they decided to take a break. It is only a ten minute walk along the river, but it sure feels like an eternity.

His keys are conveniently hiding underneath his files and it takes more time than appropriate to pull them out. The elevator ride is quiet, only broken by the voice announcing the that they have arrived in his level. He has been in this apartment for six months and failed to decorate with anything more than the bare necessities.

He hasn’t even gotten a second pair of slippers to offer Madara, so he slides him his own and walks in his socks. After a moment of hesitation, he takes of his suit’s jacket and loosens his tie.

Over a glass of calming ice tea, Madara eventually uncurls as he settles on Tobirama’s couch and Tobirama sits on the single armchair. 

Madara stares out of the window for a long while. “I’ve started seeing a therapist. It helps,” he hesitates, then sighs, “with the anger.” 

Tobirama is not entirely sure what to say to this, so he opts for an affirmative hum, but Madara is already about to continue anyway, but stares deep into his glass. “I think what helps is to finally talk about him again.” 

Then Madara’s phone on top of the table rings and he is quick to rise and reach for it, but his sudden movement has his glass flip and spill over Tobirama’s white dress shirt. 

They stare at the drenched fabric for far longer than is strictly necessary, before Madara utters an apology and Tobirama rises and pulls off his shirt. He doesn't even hesitate and already looks around for a fresh one.

He did not anticipate Madara’s sharp inhale as he stares at his left chest and his hand stretches out, but just shy of touch it retreats. “I didn’t know… when did you?”

In red ink, underneath his skin atop his ribcage above his heart, copied in Kagami’s scratchy writing is a fragment of the last note he ever left them. A small part of a long letter he wrote for father’s day, surrounded by swirls and hearts and in stark contrast to his skin.

`Papa, Daddy, I love you´

Ironic, how only now that he is staring at Madara does he notice that the bags under his eyes are still as dark as the last time he saw him and that the lines around his brows are still furrowed in an expression Tobirama knows him to only wear when he is in severe pain.

It is still fresh. 

His tattoo. But also the gaping emptiness. 

Maybe he will even miss the physical pinch once his skin is fully healed. 

“A week.” His voice is hoarse. “I got it a week ago.”

Madara’s hand is still in the open between them and it takes less than Tobirama imagines to gently grip his wrist and pull him close till the tips of his fingers can feel along the slightly elevated edges over the foil still glued on top of his flesh.

After a moment, Madara's hand moves on its own. “Do you still have the original?” 

“Yes. It was one of the only things I took with me.” Most of their belongings and reminders of Kagami were still in their old apartment.

“Why did you leave?”

That was a loaded question. As brask as Madara often gets and just as hard to answer without tearing rifts between them that were still too tender to touch. “We lost our child.” 

Tobirama has to close his eyes in something slightly longer than a blink to stop his burning eyes, but even as his sight blurs when he opens them, he knows that his glasses are not at fault. “After the funeral we were fighting a lot. Grief can be a very isolating experience so I thought maybe it would be easier to cope with it alone.” 

Out loud, it sounds short-sighted and egoistical.

Madara pulls away his fingers and stares at their pads, before he clenches them and glares. “You stupid man, this is not something we will recover from.” And the assurance in his voice soothes over something Tobirama hasn’t known to be sore. 

“I know.”

“Then why do you think there is a point in learning to survive it without the only one able to understand the extend of our loss. There is no one else in this boat with me, so please, don’t stir our marriage against a cliff before I even had a chance to save it. To lose you too, after everything…”

He had known Madara for the entire forty years of his life, had been in a relationship with him through twenty-five of those, married to him for fifteen and parents for six. 

“I’m sorry.” And Tobirama could do little but stare at the cold, wet shirt in his hands, but a warm palm suddenly cups his cheek and caresses his nape.

“Who do you expect me to laugh with about Kagami’s silly jokes?” 

The touch and warmth he feels as he nuzzles into the palm of Madara’s hand is soft. “You could try Izuna.”

“Does he know about our son’s habit to hord spoons under his pillows?” And it fulfils a good job at evoking a wet laugh out of Tobirama. “He is only our child.”

“I know.” It is healing to speak of Kagami in something else but past-tense again. 

“Can you show me this note then? I don’t remember it.” And Tobirama pulls away and leads them towards a room he tentatively calls his bedroom. Very literally, there is only a bed and several boxes, neatly labled.

The one with a small stack of Kagami's belongings is already on the unused half of his bed. 

In it is a folder of letters and notes, scribbles and essays written by Kagami during his last year at preschool and first year at primary school. There are albums with photos, not all of them, most of their memories were still in their old apartment, but Tobirama had brought enough to give himself a sense of calm.

The first photo falls from its foil before Tobirama can even pull out the letter they came for and immediately had them both laughing. It is a photo of a grinning toddler in diapers standing in the middle of something akin to a murder scene. Tomato soup spilled all over their old living room carpet and the hardwood floor.

“It took ages to clean the tiles.”, Madara says fondly.

“Wasn’t that the carpet we wanted to replace anyway?”

“But not because Kagami rubbed in his lunch.”

“We have a second picture like this.” Tobirama is already skimming through pages and pages until he shows his find to Madara. “The `red-wine incident´.”

Madara sighs and it is not entirely exaggerated. “I actually liked that couch.” 

“Our new one is more enjoyable.” 

And then Tobirama feels arms circling his waist and that he is pulled into a kiss that starts with a chaste press. As with most thing between them, it turns intimate fast. One second he is standing next to the bed, next he has set down the box of memories and pulls Madara to follow onto the mattress.

Languid strokes down his back shouldn’t feel this electrifying, but it has been weeks since he had allowed his brother to hug him and aside from that, no one had gotten close enough to touch him. 

Half a year, since he had Madara as close as this and even as his body remembers and arches into the feeling, his thoughts need a moment to get over the overbearing sensation of being held again.

Later, while the thin blanket barely covers their entangled, sweaty limbs they kiss lazily in between heaving breaths. Fingers trail slow patterns into his back and as if they hadn’t just finished, Madara turns onto his back and pulls him along.

Tobirama fits himself between his legs and ignores the feeling of sticky wetness against his stomach. The length of Madara’s neck has always been enticing and to trail it with breathy kisses would have normally evoked a moan. 

Today, Madara only hums and closes his eyes, but rests his second hand to soothingly pull through his white strands of hair. It is barely more than a whisper, but in the silence between them, it could as well have been a scream. “Will you come home with me?”

Fingers press against the back of his head and in between his shoulder blades. To know what he is about to say already hurts, but he does it anyway. 

“I still find it hard to be there when Kagami is gone.” And before Madara can deflate as Tobirama already feels him curl in, he adds. “But I will try.”

And he gets rewarded with a kiss that despite its deepness does not feel sultry or suggestive. Still, the aftermath leaves them heaving and hot, but for the first time since he fled from their appartment, Tobirama feels embedded in calm relaxation. Like a return home after a long journey. 

“Have you talked to anyone about what happened?” Tobirama raises a brow and Madara snorts. “Aside from me.”

“No.” 

“Maybe you should.” 

He had thought about it before. “Maybe I should. But my memory is hazy nonetheless.”

It happened with a phone call. 

Just the weekend before, they had returned from their summer holiday. Kagami’s raven curls had brightened at the ends with two weeks of tropical sun and hours spent building sandcastles. Despite copious amounts of sun-crème and Madara’s best effort to keep him in the shade, his skin had darkened, but luckily not burnt. 

Tobirama today, has so many videos saved on his phone of him running from the waves and he watches one whenever he needs to hear his laughter.

That Sunday afternoon, Tobirama was sorting through their tax returns while Madara was in the kitchen cooking together a storm. Smoked asparagus in his special dill-sauce with marinated baby-potatoes and tender beef that had been roasting in the oven for hours. 

When the phone rang, Tobirama was sure, it was either his brother or Madara’s mother. Kagami was not supposed to be dropped off from Torifu’s birthday party until 6pm.

“I’ll get it.” Tobirama called and at Madara’s acknowledging grunt he headed for the landline they only kept because it was included in their internet contract. 

It was a number he did not recognise immediately. “Senju-Uchiha, who am I talking to?”

With crystal clear memory will he later remember Mako Akimichi’s voice shaking fuzzy and uncoordinated. She is obviously in shock. “I am so sorry. Kagami has been hurt and it’s bad. He’s on the way to the hospital, I would have gone too, but there was no space in the ambulance. He’s breathing on his own, you hear? He’s breathing on his own, they say.” 

She hadn’t even had to finish her first sentence and Tobirama was already in the kitchen, turning of the stove only to cut short Madara’s complain. “We need to leave. Something happened to Kagami.”

The entire way to the garage is a haze. How Madara remembered to take his keys and wallet is beyond Tobirama. 

What they will be told by police officers later is that Kagami was playing hide and seek in the backyard close to the fence. The Akamichi’s neighbour’s gigantic oak tree had several dead branches. That one of them would fall and hit Kagami’s skull hard enough to crack it open was bad luck.

When they were led into the examination room Tobirama’s eyes fell to the table in the centre with Kagami striped to his boxers immediately. 

The white of his eyes shone from underneath a slit between his lids and the fleshy pink on the inside of his nostrils were things he remembers. 

Today, it is a macabre task to consciously seek for the image of his head injury, but apparently there are things even his mind cannot bear to keep. 

Hordes of doctors and nurses surrounded him, lifted his limbs like that of a puppet, connected lines of fluid to his thin, thin wrists and all while wearing expression of serious panic.

Madara swayed in his step that it took Tobirama’s hand on his arm to keep him from stumbling. They were allowed to kiss his tiny hands before they were ushered out of the room. 

After a moment of `and now?´, they called their parents and siblings. Itama and Kawarama were still on vacation and failed to answer their phones so Tobirama left convoluted messages on the voicemail.

A doctor came to take them to a room and showed them the CAT scans as Kagami was already taken into emergency surgery to ease the swelling in his brain that was already pressing towards his spinal cord. 

Hashirama and Mito were the first to arrive. Tobirama’s parents arrived soon after and with this small part of their family, they already occupied the largest portion of the waiting area. Nobody said anything. Apparently, no one could resent parents of a dying child. 

Izuna arrived in tow with his parents right as Mito got them their first coffee.

Madara’s other siblings finally answered their phones. Kawarama finally called him back too and Tobirama told him everything on a run to get sandwiches and granola bars from the cafeteria.

Later, so much later that Madara had gotten them the third cup of shitty machine coffee, a surgeon came and stirred them into another office. 

Her eyes were those of a person after a twenty hour shift and still, she handed them more coffee before explaining what had happened. 

She made it very clear that at this point all they could hope for was to lessen the damage already inflicted. She wrapped it in more compassionate wording, but the core of her message told them to expect at best, a shell of a child they had raised and loved for six years.

“He is stable for now, but the injury to his brain is fatal. He will not wake up from the state the machines keep him in right now. When you go to see him, you have to be aware that the swelling is severe.”

And as they were left alone in the too small room with fake plants and too many books on blunt head trauma, they could do nothing but stare at each other. 

It was with a distinct dissociation that Tobirama noted how he immediately felt something in himself wilt and evaporate with every breath. A massive hole in his chest pulled and churned and twisted, and exuded tiny parts of himself with every searing pain. 

When they had first looked into adoption and after over two years of waiting for a well-fitted match, they had been suddenly told of a premature newborn boy from a very young mother that given birth anonymously. 

On the way to the hospital to meet this possible child of theirs, they had not felt like they were about to become parents. 

That this was their child had hit the second the social worker had taken them to the incubator in the NICU and a small hand had latched onto Madara’s finger with determination. Even only two days old and too small and fragile, Kagami had clutched onto them though the limiting openings and later by screaming murder whenever they parted.

They used to joke that it would take a force greater than life to split them apart. 

Apparently, death had listened.

Kagami’s body was hastily prepared to be more sightly. Blood wiped from his heaving chest, but IV fluid glistened on his face around the tubes and cords and monitors, and a metal frame circled his skull where before had been sunlightened curls. 

Tobirama remembers tentatively lifting his hand despite the needles and Madara clinging to his side, but reaching out to touch Kagami’s wet cheek. The smell of blood and disinfectant was only covered by a hint of coffee one of them must have spilled on either shirt or trouser.

And even though Tobirama had been a profound realist, he could not help the sliver of hope for a reaction, a twitch of a finger in his palm, a fluttering lid, to hear him whisper anything, to show that this was not only the body of their dead child they were cradling in an illusion that would somehow keep him close.

It was after their family had bid their farewells that Madara and Tobirama were left alone.

When they were young, they had had stick fights in the Kindergarten’s playground, they had had their first kiss behind their high school’s gym and their first time on Tobirama’s old bed at his parents’ house before Madara left for university. 

In all of these years, not even in the sanctuary they called their home, had he ever seen Madara disintegrate like this. Tobirama could only hold him close and enveloped his violently shaking form against his shoulders. 

Grief, he quickly learned, was a solitary experience. 

Despite that, Tobirama had never felt closer to Madara than during the hours spent at Kagami’s bedside, telling him stories they had never told him before and somewhat saved for when he was older. 

The way the doctor approached them about the possibility of organ donation was very considerate. 

That there was a chance to save someone else from this searing pit of grief, the thought that maybe some goodness could come out of this, had them accept.

This was theirs.

Their child.

Only ours, Tobirama thought in a single possessive streak as they curled alongside Kagami onto the small mattress in an effort to memorise his still breathing, but motionless limbs for a last time.

**Author's Note:**

> I have not lost a child. But I know that grief is a very individual path.
> 
> Should there be anything you find offensive or insensitive, please don't hesitate to tell me!


End file.
